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Why Non-verbal Communications Are Critical In Sales

Just finished writing a promotional article for Foran Financial Institute. Foran provides excellent exam preparation courses for financial services professionals as well as hosting Innergize workshops on accelerated learning and communications. The article happened to be on influencing motivation—techniques for sales and marketing. And it reminded me how much we risk when we take take non-verbal communications for granted.

Take a challenge
Ask your sales people to rate their skill with non-verbal communications. Have them use a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is excellent and 1 is ‘you want me to rate what?’ I can almost guarantee you’ll get nothing lower than 7 as an answer. It’s way too easy to over simplify, assuming that because we earn our living selling that means we must be excellent in all forms of communications.

During workshops, sales people may even be tempted to brush off the practice exercises for non-verbals “because we already know that.” Yet, like everything else we choose to practice or not, there is a risk and a reward.

The following insights on consumer behaviour while not new news, are worth considering if you’re working in sales. And my belief is that we all sell whether we like it or not, products, services, or simply our ideas.

Grounded in ResearchFirst, remember that decisions are based on feelings and then justified with rational conscious thought. And neuroscience suggests that up to 95% of our emotions, decisions and behaviour are a result of unconscious processing.

Three things you may not have considered

When asked about product choices, if people don’t know consciously, they will make up salient, plausible and socially acceptable reasons for what they do. (1) In other words, customers will tell you what they think they should want, based on social influences. (A tendency that has led to some costly miss-takes in consumer research.)

While features and benefits supply the rational reasons to justify a decision once it is made, the unconscious sensory elements of an experience have far greater influence (positive or negative) on emotions, buying decisions and loyalty. (1)

Non-verbal cues and linguistic markers provide the most accurate information about what people want and intend to do, because they are largely unconscious.(2)

Unlocking unconscious communication Three skills worth learning:

How to dig deeper for the real reasons people will buy.

How to use specific process words and other non-verbal behaviour to communicate your value.

How to read the critical non-verbal cues that reveal more than customers can or will tell you.